


Alone -- a Study of Rogue and Gambit

by thatsrightdollface



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Dubious Morality, F/M, I noticed that was a tag, Maybe someone dies, No Smut, being hunted by your crazy mom, but you never know, crossroads deal?, for your power/memory draining prowess, isn't it just the worst when that happens?, it would be no fun if you knew, so I should prolly use it, this didn't happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 15:33:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4484861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She came to that place alone, where it dripped oily beads and sweat and booze and she didn’t think her mother would be able to find her.  Maybe she thought the pounding, soaring jazz would be enough to smother all the memories she’d plucked out of other people’s heads.  Maybe she thought she’d drink until her brain was swimmy static and things could be better.  Maybe she just thought the glitter-soaked bodies and sticky streets would be a good distraction – and they were, for a little while.  She wasn’t sure it was a good idea to go alone, but then again she wasn’t sure she knew what a good idea looked like by that point, what with all these bad ideas dressed up to shine and strutting their stuff.</p><p>Rogue and Gambit meet in New Orleans, in a sort of AU/alternate possibility character study dealie.  This is one of two presents I made for my friend CytosineSkald for her birthday~</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone -- a Study of Rogue and Gambit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CytosineSkald](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CytosineSkald/gifts).



> The song I reference in passing is "Build a Levee" by Natalie Merchant.

   She came to that place alone, where it dripped oily beads and sweat and booze and she hoped her mother wouldn't be able to find her.  Maybe she thought the pounding, soaring jazz would be enough to smother all the memories she’d plucked out of other people’s heads.  Maybe she thought she’d drink until her brain was swimmy static and things could be better.  Maybe she just thought the glitter-soaked bodies and sticky streets would be a good distraction – and they were, for a little while.  She wasn’t sure it was a good idea to go alone, but then again she wasn’t sure she knew what a good idea looked like by that point, what with all these bad ideas dressed up to shine and strutting their stuff.

                It was hard to know if she was in more danger by herself or letting anyone else get to know her. 

                The girl wasn’t one to talk about knowing things, anyway.   Not lately.  For a while she hadn’t been able to remember if she had a diabetic daughter – but of course she didn’t.  That was a guard she’d drained a while back, wasn’t it?  Just last week she had gotten on a train fully intending to go “home,” only then she found herself stumbling off at an unfamiliar stop in a part of town she’d never been.  It was someone else’s home in her head. 

All these different homes existed side-by-side, sometimes, with curtains the girl loved or hated depending on how much “herself” she was – with pets she couldn’t afford, with sheets she could feel but had never actually touched .

                The girl’s gloves clung to her palms in this wet heat.  That was alright.  Her hair stuck to the nape of her neck, too – a tangle of thick coppery curls with a shock of white drifting into her eyes every now and then.  If she had dyed the white streak rather than watched it sneak up on her, it might not have felt so dang obvious.  She wore green, bold like fields she hadn’t seen in a really long time.  If someone had been looking at her then, they might have noticed how flashing neon caught the wet in her eyes like she was feverish, or tearing up a little. 

                She listened to the bands play, and she watched a lady puke into an alley and get vomit strings in her hair.  She was surrounded by perfume and sweat and movement.  She watched the crowds more closely than another twenty-something might, because any one of these faces might suddenly grin or tweak an eyebrow like her mother.  Not “mama” anymore – mother.  “Mama” belonged to a time before the girl had learned how far people could go for living weapons.

                The girl knew any one of these strangers might suddenly sprout her mother’s too-sharp red hair and gloating, pointed brows. 

She didn’t know, however, that someone else was watching her. 

…

                She didn’t know, that is, until his hand was in her pocket and curled around her wallet, about to slip away back into the cracks in the concrete, into the stretching patches of darkness where the city’s singing screams couldn’t quite reach.  She wouldn’t have known he was there except for how alert she was, looking out for her mother.  She was alert like a hunted thing, and the man walked in a thin cloud of cigarette stink.  The girl turned as quickly as she could, but she still couldn’t get a good look at him – he was blurred around the edges, somehow, except for his crackling eyes.  There was some energy there, building where another man’s pupils might have been.  It would either fade away or explode, someday, the girl knew. 

                Sometimes she just knew things, like that the dark thief wouldn’t let go of her wallet when she noticed him.  He flashed her a yellow, crooked-toothed smile, though, and she was hit by the idea that he was beautiful.  Maybe it was because of his impossible eyes, forever charging themselves up and up to some unknown inevitability, or maybe it was because his face was like dirt on gold.  The kind of beautiful you never saw on TV, the kind you might not notice but that would stay with you forever if you saw it.

                He didn’t let go of her wallet, but he disappeared like a trick of the flashing artificial light, a trick of the stars.  The girl felt around in her pocket and found a Queen of Hearts card from a faded, sweat-stained deck.  She was almost more smudges and stains than ink, that queen.  Sometimes the girl felt like that, too, like she was almost more other people’s memories and fingerprints than her own self. 

                None of it was fair.  Not that woman with her hair in curls, getting her head tilted back farther and farther by a man in a leather jacket, eyes closed into kisses like she had never known fear.  Not the laughter, not the lingering cigarette smell.  Not the fact that the girl couldn’t know for sure that  _any_  of these people wouldn’t turn out to be her mother, wouldn’t suddenly claim her with a vice-grip around her arm where their skin couldn’t meet.  Claim her and take her back to a cause the girl had already killed for.  A cause she was afraid she would kill for again, and maybe if she did she wouldn’t be able to wrestle her brain back at all.  A cause she could worse-than-die for. 

                It wasn’t fair that nobody noticed the thief running off with the girl’s wallet, with her fake IDs and smuggled cash.  It wasn’t fair that she’d be stuck in this city for a while, likely as not, if she couldn’t get her stuff back.  Of course, it was possible she might wind up flashing some leg to a trucker or something and getting a ride, but she hated giving sad doe eyes to strangers.  She hated slathering her voice in marmalade so they’d think she was a safer girl to get tangled up with than her bruises and split-open lip implied. 

                She could get another wallet, sure.  It would take some maneuvering, but she could scrape together an identity just as good.

                She didn’t want to, though, and on some strange, visceral level it was good to have a mission.  A tangible goal, a shadow to chase into the darkest, grimiest alleyways.  A shadow that wasn’t her own, that wasn’t her mother’s, for once in a good long while.

…

                Not too many people noticed the dark thief.  Sometimes his own family didn’t notice him until he spoke, slithering up behind them like the smoke from his own lips.  He was used to it.  No one knew him by his birth name – it would be impossible, given as he couldn’t remember it, himself.  He was a creature of these streets, of swamps with fog that whispered, with trees that reached down into the deep muck no one could clearly see.

                Precious few people knew the thief by his new, guild-given name, either.  He was known more by what he  _was_.  It had been easier to let himself become almost an idea, lately, especially since this city had stopped being his home.  He suspected this girl was the same.   When she’d  _seen_  him, he knew she was what he had been looking for, and he led her down a rusty road where an old broken gate creaked in a wind that almost never was. 

She stared around, almost wild, almost caged – she was all tense muscles, and she held herself like she was used to breaking down walls.

                The thief balanced himself on the edge of a roof and smiled down at her, like a stone carving, like someone out of a storybook.  People told him he felt impossible in the same way he imagined other guys got told they were too good to be true.  It was probably the lightning in his fingertips that did it, the same lightning that was trapped in his eyes.  He figured he would always be a stranger, so maybe it was better to be a  _mythic_  stranger.

                When the girl looked up at him, it was with a snarl that didn’t match her voice or her sulky, painted lips.  She was a Southerner, like him.  She wasn’t a smoker, though, he could tell that much.  When she spoke, the thief realized she was younger than he’d thought.  Her voice was mixed syrup and sharp, fresh blood.  “Give me my things, or I’ll knock you down off your wall.”

                The girl had dried blood on her lip, and clumps of makeup hiding blue, flowering bruises along her cheekbone.

                “Will you, chere?”  the thief mimed surprise, keeping his voice as silky as he could – it was always a bit raspy, now, like perfume gone just a little sour. 

                “I’ve done worse, for a lot less.”

                “You know,” the thief smiled, “I do believe you must’ve.”

…

                “If you think I’m dangerous, why would you bait me?” the girl asked.   She could see the moon so much better out here, away from all the lights.  In her dream life, she lived somewhere with flowering trees where she could always see the moon and every one of the thousands of stars sprinkled above her.  She used to think it would be just a little while longer until she could claim somewhere like that for her own.  Probably not, she thought now.  She didn’t think she’d ever wear white lace again, even, without expecting it to eventually get all blood-stained.

                “A pretty price was put on your head, and I think you know it.  Our circles, they ain’t so different, see?”

                “I see,” the girl said.  The man meant he’d run into her mother, she knew, and that made her see him in a different light.  She forced herself to snort a little laugh.  “I see that you’re crazy.  Snatching my wallet and telling me someone put a  _bounty_  on me?  That’s _crazy_.”

                “Yeah, yeah,” the man said.  “Sometimes you gotta gamble on crazy to win anythin’, yeah?”

                “No,” the girl said.  “That doesn’t make sense.”

                She said that even as she realized it did make sense, more sense than it probably should.  Maybe the man saw that understanding on her face.  Had his eyes gotten brighter even just in this short time they’d been talking?  They sparked, and his fingers sparked, and the girl could just make out a deck of cards dangling loosely in his hand.  Probably missing the Queen of Hearts, she thought.  They were charging up with his energy, too, with all this pent-up wildness inside him.  Maybe it would burst through sooner or later, no matter what he did, and leave everything around him crumbling with bits of his too-bright soul. 

                In that way, the girl wondered if he could almost be her opposite.  Not consuming or consumed by the world beyond the self, but allowing that self to reach out too far into the world.

                Or maybe not.

                Maybe he was just an asshole.

                “It makes plenty of sense to me, chere,” the man said.  And wasn’t he one for verbal ticks, now?  “If it didn’t, I wouldn’t be trying to cut you a deal.”

                The girl glanced up and down the alleys – it seemed unlikely as hell, but here she was standing at a crossroads.  The wind teased at her hair with hints of cigarette smoke, and hints of perfume that was a little too familiar for comfort.  Perfume that was a lullaby finally realized, after a thousand renditions, to have always been a death threat.

                “You’re meeting her here, aren’t you?” the girl said, dropping all pretenses like she’d dropped cement blocks, before, like she’d dropped down buildings.  “You told her you’d hand me over.  What’s she paying you?”

                “She ain’t paying me a dime.  Not if you’ll help me with a little something I’ve got planned,” the man murmured, and if the girl hadn’t known better she would have thought he sounded like he was inviting her to play a game.  “Gonna stir things up in this old city.  Looking for someone who likes trouble.”

                “And what makes you think…?”

                “You don’t look like you’re exactly  _adverse_ , if you get my meaning.  Don’t look like you got much choice in the matter, either.”

                The girl was about to agree with him – she  _hadn’t_  had much choice in the matter, especially not lately.  Danger seemed to cling to her heel just like other people’s insecurities cropped up when she looked in the mirror.  She imagined this smoky, smiling thief hadn't ever had to focus to remember his own face.  Maybe it would have been easier to reach her gloved hand up to him, to make a deal there in the dark.  She would imagine what his skin felt like.  She would imagine, against all her better judgment, what his lips might feel like, too, just that little bit smooth, just that little bit raw.

She remembered the lyrics to a song by Natalie Merchant, then: “Beware of the devil, my child, beware of his charming ways.  You’ll fall under an evil spell just by looking at his beautiful face.  You gotta build yourself a levee deep inside.”

“You wouldn’t regret helping me out, you know,” the man said.  “I help back, and I’m real good at it.”

He said that just a moment too late.

The girl imagined herself sealed off, squeezing her ears shut tight against all the voices vying for her to listen.  She added his voice to the swell, to the raging river, and let it flow away.  Her will had become a levee of sorts, hadn’t it – a barrier to keep the flood of selves contained and to keep herself on solid ground.  This man spoke like he came from the swamp.  He smiled like he was used to winding roads, like he preferred to walk where the ground might give way beneath him.

“Find someone else,” the girl said.  She snatched a brick off its broken-down wall and squeezed it into bits of dust.  It was a demonstration.  It left her gloves covered in grit.  “I got my own troubles.  I don’t need yours, thanks.”

The man laughed.  It was a ragged, throaty sound.  “Aw, chere,” he said.  “I was hoping you wouldn’t say that!”

“You can keep the wallet as a consolation prize,” the girl said.

“Not like you’d use it, anyway, what with someone like me having seen inside?”

“Guess not.”

“Smart girl.”

She rolled her eyes and barked a laugh.  Her voice was more blood than syrup, just then.  “Watch it, sugar.”  A pause.  “Are those cards meant for me?  I won’t cut a deal, so you make me your  _enemy_?”  The cards were too bright now, too very, very bright.  They were shivering, just the littlest bit, like the world was getting a bit frayed along their edges.  The girl wondered what would happen when the energy crackled too far, too brightly to be contained. She wondered if this thief could blow his own meat off, if every time he let his lighting loose it was another little gamble. 

“Lemme make up my mind,” the man whispered.  And then, “Duck.”

Almost without realizing it, the girl did.

The cards exploded in sharp, crackling heat behind her, in the dark of the crooked road.  They were hurled one by one and far, far too quickly.  Could  _anyone_  move so fast, short of that magnet-man’s snarky henchman?   Short of the girl herself, if she had wanted to and had the right selves fed into her skin?  

The girl heard her mother’s own hiss of pain, heartbreakingly similar to how she’d hissed when she slammed her hand in a drawer back at home.  Lifetimes ago, it felt like.  She saw the woman fall, looking over her shoulder for sharp explosions and shadows, and didn’t even check to see if she was dead.  She wanted to, though. She would think about it for days, actually, think about it when she was cold and remembered blankets, or when she was hungry and remembered cheese sandwiches dipped in soup.

As it was, she saw her mother splayed on the ground, her illusion dribbling off like paint in the rain.  She glanced up to see if the thief was still smiling, but he wasn’t.  He wasn’t even there. 

She turned into the night and allowed herself to disappear, too.  The Queen of Hearts grew slick and nearly crumpled in her pocket.  She didn’t learn the thief’s name for a long while, yet, but she might as well have guessed it that night.

 The girl came to the thief’s city alone, and while she left alone, too, she wasn’t sure she felt like it.  She wasn't sure she knew what it was to be alone, anymore, what with the people in her head and the card that was like a promise waiting in her coat. 


End file.
